I have been reading the novel Brave New World, and I have a question about Huxley’s society. I am hesitant to characterize his society as a dystopia or a utopia. I believe Aldous Huxley wanted us to view this world and judge it with our personal notion. In my opinion, the society appears to be both; I sense it’s a dystopia disguised as a utopia. The characters are mostly happy and if found unhappy they conceal it with soma. They were trained and cultivated to like certain things, without realizing the truth behind it. We, the readers, know it’s a dystopian society since its flawed with not all characters being happy like Bernard and Helmholtz. The controllers try to disguise their imperfections by pleasuring everyone with soma: “ one cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments”. If we compare our world with that of Huxleys’, we realize both are dystopian societies that are no where near perfect. How would you guys characterize this society? Doesn't it appear to be among both descriptions.
Huxley's world is a dystopia to our modern world eyes. If someone started to nurture an embryo to life it would be frowned upon and most people would not accept the idea. We don't understand why they think an actual birth is terrible because it is not our world. So naturally we would think of Huxley's world as a dystopia because we don't understand it. It would be the other way around for them, they would think OUR world is a dystopia.
ReplyDeleteIts actually kind of sad how they have to rely on somas to be happy. Any society is flawed, but what they call their utopia is flawed and it makes then unhappy. Their utopia is isn't very happy at all. I even wonder if they actually feel real happiness at all (other than being happy from drugs). Like what you said they don't know the truth of things. So do they know true happiness??
I Think even though Bernard is miserable now he would find true happiness eventually.
I believe that the Society is both a dystopia and a utopia at the same time. Technically, a dystopia is defined as "a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding. The Society is like a dystopia in that certain individuals are miserable with the way they have to live, which is chosen at the hands of others. People of a lower caste have certain diseases like typhoid placed upon them in order to keep the society in a perpetual state of uniformity. The people have a false sense of happiness due to the soma that they rely on.
ReplyDeleteThe Society is a utopia because of how the individuals live. They are essentially made to like certain things and believe things that they normally might not. They are forced to believe those things and basically have no free will. The leaders of the Society think that they are doing all those things to their people to protect them from unpleasant situations that individuals before had suffered through. What they don't understand is that people are suffering and are unhappy.
In my opinion, Huxley's world is a dystopia by the fact that everything is made to please people. If a person feels miserable they go on ahead and take soma so they can be happy again. In the story, it states that soma also reduces the person's life such as the illegal drugs we have now that make people "happy". Also, the people in this "utopia" think that being called a mother or father is smutty because they never had parents, instead they were raised by nurses and whatnot with other children. I find this quite unfortunate because the people in the utopia are ignorant about the past because nearly everything is replaced by machine.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do believe that Huxley made this world to be a utopia because everyone belongs to each other so they won't have to be in long time relationships. But, I think otherwise because in our eyes now that would seem rather inappropriate. Also, the fact that they decide who belongs in what cast (rather, create people for a certain caste) would even out the society so there won't be to many people in one caste, such as the Alphas. But I wonder, if they have a caste system, isn't that still using something of the old world?
I believe that Huxley's world is anything but a Utopian world. As a matter of fact, I would consider it a dystopia. Imagine looking like 96 other people in the world. Whatever happened to variety? In his society, you do not get to express how you feel; instead you take a soma pill to suppress your feelings. Each person gets assigned to a caste they might not want to be in. What if they rather be an Alpha instead of an Epsilon or what if they want to be a Beta instead of an Alpha? Does the Director ask if people want to read instead of go to the feelies? It seems to me that the people in this society are actually depressed but take soma to hide it.
ReplyDeleteTo label the world Huxley has created in Brave New World is tricky. While the people commenting before me have jumped to conclude that it is obvisley a dystopia, I'm not sold on that. I feel that this world could easily be a utopia. While people are broken up into distinctly different society roles in the caste system of this world it seems that everyone in this world is happy. The people in Brave New World are specifically created to do their task for society and basically programed to enjoy it. While they may not be able to have free thinking and independence in their life, they have no idea about these concepts.
ReplyDeleteThe life of people in this world may be strange to us and seem completely foreign they are happy.
I agree with you, this society is controlled by the promise of pleasure. The people don’t realize how bad things really are. They have been trained and raised to like certain things, actually you can even say they were bred. The people have been conditioned and if you don’t know something is broken, why would you try to fix it?
DeleteIn my opinion, Huxley's world as we see it is a dystopia. Everyone in Brave New World was made and programmed to like certain things. They had no say in who they were to become because as an embryo their lives were created for them.
ReplyDeleteImagine not having any say on what you want to be when you grow up because your whole life was already planned out. And that's exactly how the people in Brave New World have their lives, they are divided into lower caste and higher caste. Where the lower cause have disease and are basically unhappy; the higher caste get all the better treatment.
But another thing we have to look at, is even though this all seems wrong and we think that they must all be unhappy; of we look closely all the people in Brave New World are, in fact, happy with their lives.